


take my body

by borzoid



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/F, Renegade Commander Shepard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 04:25:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5483294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/borzoid/pseuds/borzoid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have both changed, beneath the clenched fist of time: darkened by dust and rust and the things you witness when struck by tragedy, they would be strangers had they not metamorphosised in symmetry. The bones of them have been dislocated, and sometimes atop them they shake - but darkness can only reshape so much, and Shephard had been plunged beneath it from the first time she wrenched open eyes on sombre alley streets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	take my body

They find the time. 

War blooms amongst them like Mildew fruits; acacia flowers seeking life in still-smoldering wreckages. 

War is a noun amongst them - a capital letter, big and bold - and death closely pursues it, nipping at the Normandy’s heels like a feral dog. It has never been so near: and each fear it, and each dream of it beneath the thrum of engine emission that becomes a roar if you listen too closely. 

Shephard is not given pause; the ashes of war were familiar to her from birth, the taste of them bitter beneath open Earthborn skies. She did not require from the Reapers a valuable lesson, of which they’d already taught to so many: for long she has known there is nothing poetic about loss. 

She cannot make Keats from the stink of death, so instead she makes Poe with her weapon. 

Amongst the crew, she has become a double-edged sword, a blade lodged deep beneath the thicket of their ribs. Beneath Shephard, they have never feared - became a collective, a force of which the galaxy had beneath quickly learnt to cower, Council and mercenary both. Through certain death they had swung like ancient armies, and conquered, and conquered - but in the long stretch of years aboard the Normandy’s welcoming embrace the idol had become a woman, and the woman: a friend. 

A lover. 

And so as she treads through chromed decks of a ship that thrummed like a great heart they are no longer imposed by her presence, low and slippery like the strike of a snake, but the loss of it. In their salute they say - besides you we will walk, Shephard, until you walk no longer, and she will meet their eyes in a gaze full of sharp things and black shards and say nothing. 

They have both changed, beneath the clenched fist of time: darkened by dust and rust and the things you witness when struck by tragedy, they would be strangers had they not metamorphosised in symmetry. The bones of them have been dislocated, and sometimes atop them they shake - but darkness can only reshape so much, and Shephard had been plunged beneath it from the first time she wrenched open eyes on sombre alley streets. 

Her cabins are lit only by the dull glow of her aquarium, like underwater lamplight. After her rebirth she had tended to some red-belly sunfish, dartfish and koi - a metaphor, or maybe an oath to stop scrambling from half-open graves - they had died as quickly as her intonation, and she had not the spirit to replace them. 

The two of them are submerged in the glow of it, soft tones of blue and green that had once inspired in her some insipid peace but now set her teeth on edge. She perches like a bird of prey at the cutout of her mattress - and looks down, sharp and studious, at white skin and oil-painting colors that have become her prodigal Officer.

Before - once - Miranda may have spoken. Murmured low words and leant upwards to clutch tenderly at the whipcord space of Shephard’s forearm, drag her low until they were consumed in each other, in the shudder of breath that comes as they touch in soft places, submerged in shallow silence except for the intake of twin breaths. Shephard would allow for her this, like a parceled gift: and with ginger fingers she would unwrap it, warmed by the way Miranda would tremble beneath breathless testaments in her ear. 

But once has gone like a storm, thunder and lightening on Eletania. Miranda is breathless in the way she is subdued beneath Shephard’s scrutiny, frozen on ice, arms slung high behind the fan of her hair and hips bowed in sunken surrender. 

She waits, not for a woman to touch her - but for an apex predator to lunge, consume her within seconds, to start with her eyes. 

And lunge she does: but slow, eel-slippery, disjointed in the way she creeps over like she does not belong. She is not sharing Miranda’s gaze, but instead appraising her in pieces: the bow of a foot, blue and white; soft stretches of thigh, that lead up, and up and up; breasts caught in the rise and fall of engineered lungs. She is expert in the way she settles at the crevice of Miranda’s collarbone, but does not touch. Practiced in motorized distance, human affection made robotic. 

When she does, it is with a softness that betrays her. Calloused fingers come to press at the jut of Miranda’s brow - move in marching-line paces down the stretch of her cheek to press calculatingly at the plush of her lower lip. She is not looking in her eyes. 

When they kiss - when _she_ kisses, for Miranda is not stoic beneath her, but circumspect, like moving too quickly will frighten her Commander away. They both know better - but Miranda will have this, will wither without it, and would do to tremble beneath a woman that looks at her with something brighter than machine-eyes. 

It is soft - a press of lip, nothing longer, nothing to linger over. Miranda is not given time to be made wistful over the way they would once embrace for hours, like Cerberus was not hot on their heels, like the crew would not dither in decks beneath them and know exactly where their superiors had vanished to. Shepard moves on quickly, calculated in her efforts: kisses her waspish throat and does not bite but presses close to make a reminder of the blade of her teeth. 

Miranda fears her, always. She fears her now. She fears her as she trembles and in her belly unspools heat and the sharp indent of incisor has her thighs edging open like some blooming flower. Shepard responds only in the way she settles closer between the branch of her knees, like men making claim to long-hidden spaces, methodical kisses settling lower and makes pause only at the frantic beat of Miranda’s heart like she might tear it out. 

She does not. Not now - not yet. 

Instead she traces the jut of a collarbone; and the waspish shudder of a windpipe; and when she leaves it to search yonder she replaces it with a hand that slows to settle at her throat, wrap bruised fingers around it and presses hard only in suggestion.

Miranda trembles beneath it - and her breath comes harder, quicker, warms beneath the beast’s mouth and the space her hand occupies at her throat. 

Shepard comes to her breasts like gold, wreckages found beneath sullied surfaces. One hand remains occupied at the tremble of throat and the other saunters low and soft, would be teasing had Shepard the capacity to do so. She covers it in her in her grasp, cups it like caught holy water: Miranda closely loses herself beneath the raw feel of it, shoulders rounding beneath the touch, mouth firm in desperate effort to retain the clutch of silence, to not spook the Commander that lowers herself in bowstring increments. Her mouth follows - comes to settle at the pink peak of nipple, to breath warm over while Miranda’s stillness becomes less inevitable, more quick-lived and catastrophic. 

She takes it in her mouth - Miranda tremors beneath it, and at her throat the clutch comes to tighten - and laves it with a tongue that speaks of tender things and not the dark-headed beast that bows over her. 

Miranda is caught in it like sparks, scalpel-bites of electricity, and her breath comes harder, ends faster, shallow intakes that end like subtle suggestions of _ah, ah._

At noise, Shepard stills - and Miranda’s heartbeat follows, stolen it’s symphony pattern - and for a moment they remain suspended in time, Miranda still taut between the captured embrace of Shepard’s lips. She dares not look down, and can be sure that the Commander is not looking up, for there is no communication in their arrangement except in the way Shepard cannot be who Miranda wants and yet Miranda perils to continue wanting her, anyway. 

But the moment ends, as quickly as it had come, and Shepard moves again, detaches with wet noises and the way Miranda’s breast comes to long again for the touch. Like military training she cajoles her heart to slow, and for her thighs to command the way they stutter and shake: but she cannot curb the soft core of her that burns like it might be on fire for Shepard to touch it, makes sodden pieces of Shepard’s stark bedsheets like interruption. 

Shepard tends to her stomach soft kisses that could quite nearly fool her, had she the desire for it, in the way she could ignore their pattern - methodic like blueprints in machines. But she does not, and cannot, and instead quivers beneath her, Shepard’s grip becoming more lax at her throat and allowing for her the escape of small, shuddering noises. 

She had not last time. 

When Shepard comes low, she needs not pry Miranda wider - she wrenches thighs open like they belonged there, slung wide on white sheets beneath the scrutiny of a bloodstained woman. She’d once wondered - what would _he_ think, so see me this way? - but had been made so abysmal by it that she deigned never to again. 

She certainly does not now. 

She looks down, once - Shepard’s grip lax enough to allow for it - and meets not eyes but the image of a dark head, a gaze set so steadily at the softest parts of her that she could sworn to have felt it. She does not squirm, now: she is still, suspended, desperate as her throat is clenched harder and her eyes torn to the dark corners of Shepard’s cabin. 

Shepard does not lurch downwards - she never does, not anymore, not when the pieces of her that had been restless and wild had been replaced with things like loaded springs. She is tactical in all approaches, even this one: and Miranda can feel intimately the way each breath parts from her, long and slow; a reminder that the idol that kneels low between her legs is still living, if only in pieces.

The first touch does not betray its predecessors: it is gentling in ways that Shepard’s words never are, in ways that her eyes had been been made sharp and hard until there was nothing left to look at but dark. Miranda lurches - and she does this each time, blunders like she had not been expecting it - but Shepard allows for her one error, like it could not create chaos between them. 

It his here, that Miranda might have once said - _I love you,_ whispered with sweet fondness that makes syrup of the both of them. _Without you I -_ but now instead she is consumed in silence, counting the frenetic beat of her heart as though it might save her. 

Shepard kisses her where she is damp like morning dew, and then chases it with the way her mouth creaks open and is joined by the point of her tongue. It chases the split betwixt her like a dogged trail - and upwards to find where she is swollen to soreness, red and subtle in shaky, palpitating movement. 

“ _Ah, _” Miranda says then, bitten off like it had been wrenched from her - and Shepard pauses in slight but then stoops low to press deeper, trace shapes where Miranda quivers hot until she has come to make fists in the bedsheets behind her. Shepard’s clasp grows tighter with warning - and Miranda is made breathless beneath it, longing to move - before she is syrup under Shepard’s efforts, tongue slow and heavy where it circles, where it tugs from her tenterhook inhales.__

__“ _Ah,_ ” she sighs again - as though the syllable belongs to her, making use of what Shepard has allowed. _ _

__Her thighs have twitched wide, knees come up in slight, but Shepard pauses not to chastise her but to press lower with the blade of her tongue and bury it deep into where she is wet for her._ _

__In all that they have done this, she is still to learn how to contain it: to offer Shepard stoicism where she instead platters deficiency, consumed beneath something so fickle as pleasure. Like a whisky shot Shepard chases the slow dart of her tongue with something broader - presses a long finger of her unoccupied hand with soft, slicked ease, gives Miranda room for pause until she is moving it steady, slow, slow._ _

__Miranda thinks - _oh, god, oh_ \- but goads not to voice it, and Shepard’s mouth traverses to the part of her nearly trembling in it’s despairing want, tracing shapes until she is shivering and pressing thoughtful fingers that shift up, up, and _oh,_ , it nearly burns her not to move beneath it._ _

__And it goes on: Miranda clutches at bedsheets behind her, palms sweaty in their efforts, but her body remains slung open and taut where it is touched, knees drifted wide and shoulder making sharp, trembling movements. Shepard laves at her with practiced repose, two fingers making home in places inside of her that has her dripping like left faucets, easing movement into a silken slip-slide. They are silent in all unless when Shepard is relenting - and it is then that Miranda voices what she is being given, and what the beast below her is taking, the tragedy that tears into her in tiny syllables of “ _ah, ah_ ” like shards of light. _ _

__The ends nears quickly, though she needs not voice it: they follow a timeline, a script of what Shepard can do to her in taciturn stretches of talented minutes. Her thighs are strained in their efforts to remain placated - and her head turns to press at the pillow beneath her, neck hollowed of pleas she once would have made._ _

__“Oh,” she says, and Shepard’s tongue writes symphonies where she is swollen, sensitive to bursting - and prods inside her with practiced fingers that find places she would prayer to, had she been allowed the words._ _

__But she is not - and shall not be - and orgasm begins in the pit of her stomach and clenches her all over like Shepard’s tightened fist, has the bow of her spine tight and lifting off bedsheets damp from sweat and tarried excitement. “Ah,” she says, “ah, ah,” and she shakes with the force of it, stomach clenched and where fingers pulse inside her it is like the beat of a marching drum, damp in the way slickness has rushed from her as she trembles and stutters into the bedsheets._ _

__Shepard allows her desperate seconds afterwards, sliding slow fingers inwards and out, drawing from her shocks like laying hands on electrical wire and feeling the beat of it deep inside you. When she takes them Miranda is inclined to chase, clutch at Shepard’s corded arm and press them down deep back where they belong: but she does not, and instead is left reclined to catch her own desperate breath, soothe the way her chest leaps and falls like ocean tides._ _

__The moment drags on, consumed in silence like it is too heavy to tear off them. Miranda looks at her, but she does not look back: returns to where she had perched, stiff-legged at her corner, gaze caught in corners that offer her what Miranda could not._ _

__It’s always now -_ _

__“Shepard,” she says, low and soft and surprising in it’s fragility, and each time she is desperate to see her Commander tense in something like recognition but each time she does not: and between them equanimity is shattered like glass and Shepard is rising in fluid movements._ _

__She does not turn, not once: never has, for a stretch of time Miranda is too frightened to reflect on. She needs not straighten herself, for her clothes remain uncreased, hair unbothered in it’s whorls at the base of her throat._ _

__Each time Miranda is stung by the way she can be torn to pieces, whilst Shepard remains insouciant._ _

__She does not watch her when she goes - the familiar noises of booted footsteps, the Normandy’s mechanical noises as it allows Shepard escape from a woman who longed for nothing more than to hold her. She had watched her Commander walking away from her enough - had endured a lifetime of it, conjured it in dreams and in waking._ _

__Instead she turns; presses nose to white pillows, sheets the Commander slept on and where Miranda could not stay; and instead of Shepard she smells dust and metal and rusty bite of blood, a person so unfamiliar to her that for years she might have blundered and deigned to have have stumbled into a stranger’s door._ _


End file.
